This Is How The US Can Become a Player in Rare Earth Metals
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
China's dominance of the rare earths market is well known. This not only creates potential vulnerabilities for companies, should access to those rare earths ever get cut off, it also gives China significant leverage in trade negotiations right now. Of course, the issue is not that China is naturally endowed with more of these materials, but rather that, over the decades, it's built up an industrial ecosystem to mine and process them. So, is there any prospect of the US entering the arena in a way that's actually competitive? Our guest says yes. Heidi Crebo-Rediker is a senior fellow in the Center for Geoeconomics Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Earlier in her career, she was the US State Department's first chief economist. For the CFR, Heidi has undertaken an extensive study of the US position with respect to rare earths and developed a broad set of suggestions for how the US can actually compete. She discusses the resources we have right now, and the technologies and policies that could make the US competitive in this arena.
Read the report here: https://www.cfr.org/report/leapfrogging-chinas-critical-minerals-dominance/
Read more:
Why China’s Grip on Critical Minerals Is So Hard to Break
EU to Offer US Critical Minerals Partnership to Check China
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Transcript
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| 1:02.4 | Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. |
| 1:21.0 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. |
| 1:22.3 | I'm Jill Wisenthall. |
| 1:23.4 | And I'm Tracy Allaway. |
| 1:29.6 | Tracy, you know, we do these episodes on various areas of technology in which China is perceived to be ahead of the U.S. They're very interesting and I learn a lot. It's not obvious to me like what |
| 1:36.1 | lessons there are or anything. Some of these things are like, we're really far behind. I don't |
| 1:40.5 | think we're ever going to catch up. This is very interesting in academic. But what exactly is the point of talking about all this? I don't know if there's anything to do with this |
| 1:48.5 | information. You know what I thought you were going to say is that we are sometimes accused of |
| 1:53.5 | identifying strategic choke points or areas of difficulty on the podcast and then coming up with |
| 1:59.5 | absolutely no solutions for how to fix them. |
| 2:03.0 | I will be the first to admit I have no solutions. If someone accuses me of saying you have not |
| 2:08.7 | offered any solutions, you know what? I just say, that's not my job. I'm just a mere podcast |
... |
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